Veritas Magazine
It's Hip To Be Square™
There’s Counting Crows. Then there’s Casting Crowns. There’s Green Day and Third Day. Michael Buble and Michael W. Smith. There are mainstream bands and Christian bands, but is it possible to appeal to both audiences? The Veritas staff sat down with Atlantic recording group NEEDTOBREATHE before a recent concert in Des Moines to find out how they’re doing it.
It seems that the band is appealing to both audiences simply by not trying to please one over the other. “Music isn’t about satisfying,” says Bo Rinehart, the band’s lead guitar player. “It’s about doing what’s honest and right with you.” Bo says their fans are fans of music, plain and simple. “Our main goal with writing music is to be legit—to make music that anybody can say is great,” he says.
So far, their plan seems to be working. According to a Billboard.com review, “These guys know how to write thoughtful, literate lyrics with ear-grabbing melody… NEEDTOBREATHE shouldn’t be pigeonholed in any one market. Great songs, well-performed, need to be enjoyed by everyone.”
But not everyone agrees. The band has faced criticism—more from the Christian audience—for their decision to remain in both markets. For instance, some fans were unhappy when one of their songs was featured on a promo for the television show Desperate Housewives. “Unfortunately, we don’t much control over those uses,” said Bo’s brother, lead singer Bear Rinehart, in an interview with Christian Music Today. “But at the same time, people watching those TV shows are the ones we ought to be reaching out to anyway. So we try not to let negativity sway us.”
To reach out to people, the band writes music about what’s real to them.
“Gospel is one of the best forms of music ever made,” Bo says. “We’re coming from a Christian perspective. If we’re being honest, some of our faith is going to come into our music.” Their faith certainly comes through in songs such as “Signature of the Divine (Yahweh),” which starts with these words: “Cathedrals have tried in vain to show the image of your face. But we are, by your design, the signature of divine.”
Alex Welsh, 21, who attended the concert in Des Moines, said it was one of his favorite songs the band played because of the message it carries. “We’re God’s signature—what he created,” he says. Alex had never heard of NEEDTOBREATHE before they came to Des Moines. “When I found out they’re a Christian band, it was a bonus,” he says. “If they have good morals and no outright vulgarity, the fact that they’re Christians comes across in their music.”
NEEDTOBREATHE says their fans would describe them as energetic because of how they react to their audience. “We have a lot of fun when we play,” says Joe Stillwell, the band’s drummer. “We’re a band that looks like we’re having a great time up there.”
But that’s not the only reason for their popularity. “It helps that we grew up together, came through the ranks together,” Joe says. “None of us are more entitled.” All four of the band members were born in Possum Kingdom, South Carolina, and three of them are pastors’ sons. Their roots are important to them. “We still live in a small town,” Joe says. “They’re keeping us grounded.”
Bo says that grounding comes through in their latest album, The Heat. “It’s something closer to home,” he says. “All the songs are about very real things that happened to us.” Although the album may be closer to home, the band spends a lot of time away as they’re out on tour, living in a bus they bought themselves. “We’ve given up a lot: a little bit of sanity, a lot of privacy. We don’t get to see our families,” Joe says. “But we wouldn’t trade it.”
According to Bo, writing and performing music is the most honest thing they can do. And for right now, anyway, that means appealing to both Christian and mainstream audiences. “It would be easy for us to leave that and go to one market or the other,” he says. “But we feel like we fit between the two.”
Although NEEDTOBREATHE's music may fall somewhere between Christian and secular, it's no less sincere than either one. “After all,” Bo says, “whatever you’re about is going to come out in what you create.”
